The Human Touch: Selections from the RBC Wealth Management Art Collection

This exhibition, drawn from the RBC Wealth Management Art Collection, features major works by international contemporary artists, all of which explore creative interpretations of the human figure.  Ranging in scale and media, these whimsical, provocative, beautiful, and unusual pieces include works by Radcliffe Bailey, John Baldessari, Chuck Close, Lalla Essaydi, Roland Fischer, Dinh Q. Lê, Roy Lichtenstein, Hung Liu, Elizabeth Peyton, T.L. Solien, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.  Created over the past twenty years, the RBC collection is regularly displayed at the firm's headquarters in Minneapolis; because of its continued growth, now numbering more than 400 pieces, selection of the collection are able to be shared with the public through the company’s touring program.

Whether a striking realistic portrait or a figural study of the human body, the works in the exhibition probe the depths of the individual psyche, while offering an intimate investigation of the human condition. Don McNeil, curator of the collection and exhibition, notes that RBC features the human figure in its art collection because it believes that the age-old need to understand the human condition is still vital and that the human form remains its most direct manifestation. “The earliest known drawings and sculptures depicted human and animal figures. These artistic expressions centered on matters most important to early man - success in the hunt and fertility. As society evolved, the human figure maintained its importance in artistic endeavors and is the major focal point in artistic expression to this day."

The Human Touch is made possible by RBC Wealth Management. Additional support for the exhibition is provided by the Coeta and Donald Barker Changing Exhibitions Endowment, The Harold and Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation, a grant from the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and JSMA members.